


Names

by You_Are_Constance



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Bobby becoming Trevor, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Funerals, Gen, Grief, Heavy Angst, I'm Sorry, actually there's three, happy birthday bobby, it's really hard to read because of the angst so beware, other characters are there but have very small roles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 23:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30079761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Are_Constance/pseuds/You_Are_Constance
Summary: Bobby was still broken, but maybe Trevor didn't have to be.
Relationships: Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Names

**Author's Note:**

> my sister (@why-we-build-the-wall on tumblr) gave me the line in the summary and i wrote 1,000 words from it in like, 2 hours.

His parents find him, passed out on the floor of the garage they used as a studio, after running there when he couldn’t find them and learned the worst, and sobbing until he no longer had it in him to cry. They later told him that the news told them about the tragedy. _“Three of the four members of the teenage rock band ‘Sunset Curve’ have been reported dead—”_ They told him they feared the worst, and that he was one of the three.

Personally, he’d prefer things that way. He’d prefer to be dead along with them. That way, he wouldn’t have been left behind. He wouldn’t feel this.

They take him to his room, where he lays for days on end. He can’t bring himself to move. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink, doesn’t sleep, as much as his parents try to force him into it.

His parents go back to the Orpheum to pick up their instruments and bring them back to the studio, where they say they belong. In the home the band made together. He finds out later that Luke’s parents are too emotional to handle keeping his things, and that Alex and Reggie’s parents are noticeably silent about the whole event, whether it be from grief or shock or… something else.

He forces himself to get out of bed when his parents tell him the news of the funerals. He doesn’t know if he can handle it, if he can handle seeing them buried, if he can handle actually saying goodbye for the last time, but the possibility of missing those moments, and missing his chance to do just that, is an even scarier thought.

They all happen within just a few days, almost back-to-back. For a long time, he’d been numb. He didn’t feel a thing. Then, when the funerals come, everything comes rushing over him again, drowning him, and he can’t find it within him to fight the oncoming onslaught of grief and pain.

They shouldn’t be buried. They shouldn’t be dead. They were seventeen. _Seventeen._ Their lives shouldn’t have ended so soon.

But they’re being buried, and worse, they’re being buried apart.

They should be buried together. They should stay together, even in death, like they stayed together during life. They were each other’s family, and they should be treated that way.

But when the funerals come, they come apart. Close together time-wise, but still eons apart.

Reggie’s is the first.

It’s small, with a nice service. At least, that’s what he’s told it is. He’s never actually been to a funeral before, at least, not that he remembers. This is his first.

Reggie’s parents are trying to hold it together, to pretend that everything is fine between them, even if it is not. They try to hold it together for Reggie, but it won’t last. He knows it won’t last. It never had.

He sits in a corner, away from everyone and everything, and sobs. Even Reggie’s own family, his little, twin brothers, don’t cry like he does. Reggie’s parents don’t even hardly shed a tear.

He notices, through his own tears.

Luke’s is the next day.

His is larger. Luke’s parents cry nearly the whole time, even if only silent tears.

He can’t blame them. They lost their only son, and on bad terms.

But he cries more than they do. Sobs, again. Through the entire service. No one has the heart to ask him if he’s alright. The answer would be a firm ‘no’ anyway. How could he be alright, when the only three friends he had in the world were cruelly ripped away from him?

And Alex’s...

Alex’s funeral just fills him with rage.

Alex’s parents are pretending. They’re pretending that they didn’t kick their son out of their home and their hearts. They’re pretending that he’s someone he’s not. Alex’s sisters stay quiet, silently shedding tears.

He wants to scream even more than he wants to cry. He wants to tell Alex’s parents who and what Alex really was and make them face it.

But he can’t. He can’t bring himself to.

So he sits in another corner, sobbing by himself, and shaking with rage and with sadness.

After the funerals, he dares for the first time since that night to visit the garage.

The sight he faces is almost as bad as the funerals themselves.

To see their instruments, packed away and untouched, hurts more than seeing them buried.

Their instruments haven’t been used since the sound check. They played ‘Now or Never’ for the last time together.

They were meant to play it, along with their other songs, again that night. In front of a sold-out crowd. They were meant to become legends.

Maybe they had, but not in the way they envisioned. If they became legends, it would be for the tragedy, not for the music.

Now their instruments sat, packet up, in the center of the garage. Their players either buried in the ground or wishing that they were.

Alex’s drumsticks are sitting atop the table. Luke’s songwriting notebook is sitting beside them. Reggie’s bass strap had been taken off his bass and was laying across the table as well.

Pieces of them. Pieces of the only true friends he’d ever had.

That’s all that was left. Pieces.

Pieces that he couldn’t put back together, no matter how hard he tried.

There are pieces of himself in there, too. His own guitar. His picture, with them. Him, standing beside them.

His hands run over the case of his own instrument, packed away alongside theirs. He hasn’t gotten even this close to it in all that time.

And he still can’t bring himself to unpack and play.

It still hurts too much.

He can’t be Bo—

He stops. He can’t continue that word, that name.

It hurts too much to say. It’s not his real name, only what they called him.

And now he can’t even think it anymore.

Even his real name, ‘Robert,’ hurts.

He can’t be the person they knew. Not anymore. It hurts too much. He can’t be… himself, anymore. He was most comfortable with himself when he was with them. Now that they were gone… he can’t bear to stay the person he was.

It hurts. It tears him in two.

He couldn’t use his own name. He couldn’t use his own personality. He couldn’t be that person.

He had to become someone else entirely.

Robert, Rob, Robbie, Bob—they were all too close. He had to go further from that. Bert, still, no. Maybe… backwards. Trebor, no, Tre _v_ or—wait. That was it. Trevor.

He’d become Trevor. Someone else. Someone not bound by his grief.

Bobby was still broken, but maybe Trevor didn’t have to be.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are very much appreciated (but please don't swear)
> 
> my tumblr is @you-are-constance (come say hi!)


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